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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The Daughter He Found

A thin pasty-faced tattooed teen-aged girl knocked on Ed
Green’s Salt Lake City, Utah, condo door one day a couple of springs ago. She
looked strung-out and exhausted and burst into tears the moment she opened her
mouth and sputtered, “You’re my father.” Much to Ed’s surprise, the image of a
girl he’d had a somewhat casual relationship with in college came back to him.
Her eyes the same steel blue as the tattooed girl’s. Immediately he wondered,
why had the girl he’d slept with in college never told him she was pregnant and
that she’d given birth to their daughter? Over the next few hours he learned
the tragic story of his daughter and the tumultuous life she’d lead since her
birth. After giving birth, her mother realized she didn’t really want to have a
baby and half-heartedly mothered her until she put her up for adoption as a
toddler. Her adoption family broke up and she was thrust into bouts of poverty
and depression and early experimentation with hard drugs and left with an
overwhelmingly constant feeling of abandonment and rejection.

A bit shocked but full of paternal love and desire to be the
father Tiffany wanted and deserved, Ed welcomed Tiffany into his world with
open arms. She moved into Ed’s condo and almost immediately bonded with Ed’s
mother and 12 year-old daughter. By the following fall she was enrolled in her
first semester at community college and thriving. While on the one hand Ed was
thrilled and grateful he could fill a void and have some positive influence on
Tiffany’s life, he was also angry and hurt that Tiffany’s mother could have
given birth to his baby and put her up for adoption without legally having to
notify him. It took him awhile to let go of the idea that if only he’d known
about Tiffany from the beginning, her childhood would have been less traumatic.

However, even if Ed had known that Tiffany’s mother was
pregnant and wanted to put Tiffany up for adoption, Ed would have had to jump
through impossible hoops to assert any rights to decisions regarding his
daughter. In fact, Utah has become to go-to state for pregnant women who want
to exclude biological fathers from the decision making process.

In the state of Utah a birth mother may consent to an
adoption or relinquish an infant after giving birth. She does not need the
consent of the unmarried father unless he has done the following: filed a
petition to establish paternity in a Utah court with an affidavit stating he is
"willing and able" to have full custody and will pay child support,
pregnancy-related and childbirth expenses (it also must detail a plan for the
child's care); filed a "notice of commencement of paternity
proceeding" with the Office of Vital Statistics; and has offered to pay
for a reasonable share of the mother's pregnancy-related and childbirth
expenses, unless he is able to show he did not know about the pregnancy, or was
prevented from paying the expenses, or the mother refused his offer to pay.

Under Utah’s law Ed would not even be entitled to notice of
the mother’s proceedings unless he complies with the above as an unmarried
biological father. By virtue of the fact that he is engaged in a sexual
relationship with a woman, a man is considered on notice that a pregnancy and
adoption proceeding regarding the child may occur. Utah imposes upon the father a duty to protect his own rights
and interests.

This is archaic and sexist and heartless and downright
ridiculous. Just because a man doesn’t have a uterus doesn’t mean he doesn’t
care about what happens to his biological offspring. Just ask Ed Green who, two
years after reuniting with his long-lost daughter, Tiffany, still shakes and
shudders when he thinks about all the years Tiffany lived feeling abandoned,
without knowing her father was more than willing to love and nurture her.